Influence of the Arabic Script and Language on Acehnese Manuscript Kitab Tauhid

Abstract

Manuscripts are known to transmit cultural heritage across generations along with thoughts, knowledge, customs, and people's behaviors. The current study aimed to examine the influence of Arabic manuscripts on the Malay and the Acehnese tradition with the spread of Islam. For this purpose, an Acehnese manuscript, Kitab Tauhid (KT), was sampled as the primary data to find out the orthography of Acehnese and the Malay language, a domain that has so far been underrated and understudied. This qualitative study used a descriptive research design and note-taking method, i.e., transcribing and translating for retrieving the absorption of the Malay language and the Jawi orthography. The objective was to obtain a deep analysis of the sampled text and classify the Jawi Script and Malay language into the description. The retrieved data was analyzed by classifying them into different types of loanwords and to examine the Jawi script's orthography and the variety of Malay used in the KT manuscript. The results revealed that after Islam's arrival in Nusantara, the Jawi scripts were influenced by the Malay language. This influence included using diacritical marks or harakat as vowel markers being removed and replaced with alif, wau, and ya. The implications include evidence of the Arabic vocabulary and the influence of Arabic phonemes and phrases in the KT manuscript.